Elaine Hatfield

August 14th, 1928- August 31st, 2017

Long time Palo Alto resident, Elaine (Verle Elaine) Hatfield recently passed away at her home in the Green Meadow community of South Palo Alto. The cause of death was complications from pancreatic cancer and advanced Alzheimer’s.

Elaine Hatfield was born in Whittier, California. Her parents, Vera and Fred Weiss, where both school teachers. She attended Stanford University where she majored in economics and later received a Master’s Degree in statistics.

Elaine was one of the first women to enter the computer science and engineering field. After graduation she moved to Washington D.C. where she accepted a position with the National Security Agency working on cracking codes using statistics. After 3 years she moved back to Palo Alto where she took a position as a statistician in the planning department of C&H Sugar in San Francisco. After C&H Sugar, she started as one of the first computer programmers for United Technologies. She later worked as a computer scientist for Lockheed Corporation before taking a position as a Research Engineer for Stanford Research Institute where she spent the rest of her career focusing on developing software to model the ionosphere in order to facilitate long distance communications.

In 1956, she married Don Hatfield, who also worked at C&H Sugar. A native of Montana, he was an outdoorsman, and he and Elaine went on many camping and hunting trips. She shortly thereafter had two children, Jock and Jay. By 1960, Don and Elaine were divorced and she became a young single mother. Her first son Jock tragically died of cancer at 23. She spent a number of years compiling his writings in a book she published in his memory.

Elaine was an avid bridge and tennis player and an active member of the Unitarian Church of Palo Alto as well as the National Audubon Society, Parents Without Partners and the Friendship Force. She travelled throughout the world during her retirement with the Friendship Force. She was extremely social and had literally hundreds of friends in the Bay Area related to these activities and clubs.Her activities were restricted in the last 10 years by the advancement of Alzheimer’s, but she remained in her home of 60 years in South Palo Alto and was able to continue to attend the Unitarian Church and enjoy activities throughout the Bay Area and beyond.

Elaine was a beloved member of the community and a wonderful mother. She is survived by her son Jay Hatfield and her four grandchildren, Katherine, William, Andrew and Benjamin as well as her brother Robert Weiss.